Buses v cars – some thoughts on lack of ambition, the 3Bs and storekeepers
BigCake has had an unsolicited piece of feedback on ambition, our more precisely our lack of it, that he feels hits the spot.
Ambition matters a whole lot in our economic growth story.
It’ll be our businesses, and in particular our exporters, that will lift the Kiwi economy out its rut.
But there’s an issue around our business ambition, often expressed as the Kiwi business owner’s fixation with the 3Bs – the bach, boat and BMW.
Get those and you are made.
At a personal level for the business owners this is fine – their business supports their desired lifestyle.
But from a national economic perspective it’s bad. As a result of the 3Bs we have lots of small companies and not enough large ones who have the grunt and scale to make a real difference to everyone’s incomes.
I once heard the difference between Kiwi and US business owners described as: ours see their businesses as cars, Americans as buses.
The feedback next to BigCake is from an exporter:
“I’ve recently been talking to export managers in various New Zealand food and produce firms, and find many of them conservative when asked if they’d given any thought to the Southeast Asian market, with whom we have a free trade agreement.
“They often sell to Thailand, but it’s highly reactive and they have no real control on the price they take, the brand, the sales channels etc.
“It’s because they’re focusing on ‘higher value markets’ which is fair enough, except that this is a short-term policy, and it also ignores that they don’t even know what long-term value the Southeast Asia area could offer… and they’re doing nothing to develop it.
“My point is that they’re only really interested in the low-hanging fruit and the easy, quick gains. The problem with our New Zealand business psyche is that we have no long-term vision. Why is that?
“For me the image that arises is that we’re quite good storekeepers of our own produce. We’ll happily sell when someone wanders past our farm gate. We just can’t be arsed properly going to market and seriously selling our wares.”
BigCake knows for a fact there are many great New Zealand exporters out there, but too many are, as my correspondent says, “storekeepers”.
In case you think this is harsh (my correspondent is not a negative person, in fact the opposite), here’s what Asian business people say in a New Zealand Trade and Enterprise perceptions study.
• Kiwi business people “are not seen as strong business partners and are felt to lack business basics and a proactive attitude”.
• “[Asian] businesses sense a naivety among New Zealand companies.”
• “Businesses wonder if New Zealand is really making the effort…”
• “New Zealand’s relaxed attitude can seem half-hearted and simplistic in the ‘survive or die’ business world of Asia.”
Calling them “storekeepers” was possibly being kind.